(2025) 6 TWAIL Review 133-166
ISSN 2563-6693
Published under a Creative Commons licence. 

The Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) recommendations and guidance have been framed as objective global standards for the detection and prevention of illicit financial flows. Such broad framings obscure key assumptions of what global standards and priorities are or should be. Without critical examination from the perspective of Third World thinking, the FATF developed recommendations and guidelines for illicit financial flows. Building on these, a framework for monitoring and detecting money laundering (ML) using virtual currencies (VCs) has emerged, which relies on these contextless recommendations. By failing to account for Third World socioeconomic and sociocultural context and perspectives in the design and implementation of international ML regulation for VCs, these recommendations risk criminalizing transactions that are perfectly normal in local contexts, making compliance impossible, and sanctions inevitable. This, however, can be remedied by incorporating Third World perspectives in the design and implementation of international regulation of VCs along with internal changes in Third World countries to position them as net beneficiaries of both technology and international regulation. This paper probes the key assumptions underlying FATF framings for ML using VCs and the resulting prejudicial outcomes for Third World countries and the lived realities of its people. Applying a TWAIL methodology, this paper analyzes the western-centred thinking that grounds FATF structures, policies, and processes. The paper recommends the design and development of alternative international law structures and processes that respond more thoughtfully to Third World priorities and socioeconomic contexts, while also expanding the range of possible solutions. It further recommends internal changes to Third World states to position them as net beneficiaries in the global regulation of VCs.